


when i grow old

by editingatwork



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5 Things, Coming Out, Established Relationship, Fear of Death, Fluff, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hospitalization, M/M, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23738329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/editingatwork/pseuds/editingatwork
Summary: There are things no one told Kent about getting older. He’d always expected his body to slowly betray him, ground down by the passage of time. But there’s some shit that’s just so un-fucking-dignified that he almost wishes he’d die sooner.
Relationships: Alexei "Tater" Mashkov/Kent "Parse" Parson
Comments: 32
Kudos: 220





	when i grow old

1\. (60 years old)

There are things no one told Kent about getting older. He’d always expected his body to slowly betray him, ground down by the passage of time. But there’s some shit that’s just so _un-fucking-dignified_ that he almost wishes he’d die sooner.

Like the fact that his body produces gas like a swamp, suddenly. It no longer matters if he avoids beans or does yoga or eats Activia yogurt on the sly. In a matter of months, he goes from having fairly good control over this particular bodily function—just enough to save time to vacate a room before embarrassing himself—to being a helpless, hapless victim of his intestines.

One evening, he goes to join Alexei on the sofa to watch a movie and just... farts. Like a bullhorn. There’s no warning, no twinge in his gut to herald its coming. He bends his stiff, uncooperative knees, allows gravity to bring his butt down to the cushion, and somehow ends up parting the skies for the trumpets of the heavenly host right out his goddamn _ass_.

Alexei stares at him for a full five seconds, aghast, and then laughs so hard he cries.

“It’s not _fucking_ funny!” Kent yells at his red-faced husband. He grabs a throw pillow and whacks him with it. And in doing so, he farts again. And again.

Alexei laughs so hard he gets a cramp.

2\. (42 years old)

Alexei isn’t _vain_. He doesn’t preen in mirrors. He takes care of himself but he doesn’t obsess, doesn’t tear himself down over peeling cuticles or split ends or the wrinkles that show up in his late twenties, like he knew they would because his grandmother was the same way.

He promises himself early to accept his advancing age gracefully. With _gratitude_ , to be enjoying yet another day with people and a life he loves.

So he resents himself, a little, for the way he stops and stares in horror when he realizes he’s getting age spots.

There are several all over his face and hands by the time he notices. They’re like little shadows, not even dark enough to be called freckles. But they’re there, and they multiply. Then, worse, they darken.

They’re not sexy, like the gray hairs streaking through his chestnut brown. They’re not distinguished, like the laugh lines sinking into his eyes and mouth from his decades of exuberant smiling. They’re not even noteworthy, like his hip giving him a little more trouble each season. They’re just... signs of decay.

He pretends he doesn’t see them.

“Aw, damn,” Kent groans one night while they’re bent over their respective sinks in the master bathroom, getting ready for bed. His mouth is full of toothpaste but he’s squinting at his face. “I’ve got more age spots. Like, tons more.” He spits out the toothpaste and leans close to the mirror. “Fuck, I’m turning into a rotten apple.”

Alexei frowns. “Don’t say that.”

“Okay, maybe that was harsh,” Kent admits, although he’s still analyzing himself. “But seriously. This is one of those aging signs I always dreaded. They’re not pretty. They’re just, like... one more sign you’re going bad.”

Alexei makes a hurt noise and catches Kent’s hand in his. “Don’t say. I like your age spots.” It’s not exactly a lie; he’s hardly thought about Kent’s age spots at all.

From the look on his face, Kent doesn’t believe him.

“Means you grow old with me,” Alexei insists. He tugs on Kent’s hand—the one with a ring on it—to bring him close and kiss him. “Like when you do that.”

Kent goes red and smiles with pleasure. “Well, if you put it like that,” he says, and kisses Alexei back.

3\. (76 years old)

Alexei yells something from the kitchen.

“What?” Kent calls back from the living room.

Another hairball of sound is shouted at him.

Kent grabs his phone and mutes the music on the stereo system. “What?” he hollers.

“—get——becue sauce————store———?”

Groaning, Kent heaves himself off the sofa and shuffles into the kitchen. It’s not that far, and they have an open floor plan. Sound carries. Kent just can’t hear anything worth jack shit, these days.

He walks into the kitchen and sees Alexei halfway inside their cupboard. “Say that again?” he calls.

Alexei turns around, squinting through his glasses. “Did you get barbecue sauce at store yesterday? I put it on list but can’t find. I want double check for party this weekend.”

“I thought I did.” Frowning, Kent joins him at the cupboard. Then he chuckles, reaches, and plucks two fat bottles off third shelf, right in the middle. “Here, babe.”

Alexei sighs. “Stupid eyes,” he grumbles, and takes the bottles from Kent.

4\. (89 years old)

Kent is in a chair in a sterile hospital room with cream-colored walls and light blue curtains. Alexei is in a hospital bed, asleep, with tubes in his arms and electrodes on his chest. His heart monitor beeps quietly.

For thirty seconds last night, he hadn’t had a heartbeat at all.

Kent sighs and shifts in his chair and winces at the stiffness in his... everything. He has a magazine from the lobby but he can’t stop watching Alexei. By mainstream metrics, Alexei has not aged gracefully. He went bald in patches. His skin sags _everywhere._ Fat has stuck to some areas like chunky peanut butter, and melted away in others to expose knobby bones and puffy veins. Age spots dot his entire body like pain spatter. His eyesight is so bad that he’s essentially legally blind.

He’s the most beautiful thing Kent has ever held and called his own. And he just almost _lost_ him.

Kent nearly lost Jack Zimmermann when they were kids; a quick, searing bolt of lightning pain that hurt because it was unexpected, and the worst fear he’d ever known in his nineteen years.

Hearing that Alexei had been dead on the table for thirty seconds was like springing a leak in a submarine. They got Alexei back. Alexei is stable. Kent isn’t going to suffocate on the death of him anytime soon. But now there’s briny water on the floor, soaking his shoes, numbing him to his bones. Hearing that he’d lost Alexei for thirty seconds and not even known it—that he’d already been alone and not known it—had been...

It had been...

Kent twists the ring on his finger and thinks, ‘ _til death do us part_.

Unless they die in a car accident, one of them is inevitably going to leave first.

Kent tries to breathe through the memory of “we lost him for about thirty seconds but were able to restart his heart.”

If God is listening, then Kent prays Alexei goes first. He prays that Alexei never knows what it feels like to live in a world without Kent.

5\. (34 years old)

Coming out wasn’t something Alexei ever planned to do.

He’s so marginally bisexual that to call himself that almost feels like a lie. He likes women, women, women, and then, once in a blue moon, a man. Maybe. It’s too much hassle to act on it, anyway.

Alexei’s teammate, Jack Zimmermann, is very much in love with one specific man. Jack comes out on national TV, gets engaged, and gets married to that man within the span of four years.

It’s a beautiful wedding. Alexei cries.

So all that happens, and Alexei still doesn’t plan on coming out, because what’s the need? He likes women. He likes one specific woman enough to bring her to Jack and Bitty’s wedding. He likes this one, specific woman enough to slow-dance with her at a wedding and think to himself, _Yeah, I’d like this. We could do this._

They don’t. But it’s the thought that counts.

The Falconers host a summer hockey camp and Alexei volunteers to help out. It’s fantastic. The kids are tiny and bounce around the rink like pinballs, too psyched to be on the ice to care about how often they fall. Their ecstatic joy delights Alexei. He skates circles around them, playing keepaway, his heart full to bursting.

One of the smallest skaters loses his footing and runs into one of the older kids, sending him toppling. The older kid hits the ice with a startled cry, his helmet banging on the ground with a worrying _crack._

Alexei is the nearest adult, and he rushes over. The kid is already pushing himself to sitting. He’s red-faced and wide-eyed from the shock of the fall, but he seems alright.

“Hey, hey, you okay,” Alexei soothes, helping him up. “How’s head?”

Instead of answering, the kid zeros in on the child who accidentally knocked him down. He pushes the kid backwards, snapping, “Watch where you’re going, queer!”

Alexei feels like he’s been slapped. He stands there for a moment, ears ringing and mouth open, just staring.

This boy is _ten_.

“Hey, don’t push. It’s accident. Why you say that?” Alexei asks. His stomach is in knots. “Why you call him that?”

The boy freezes. He glares at Alexei. “I didn’t mean it.”

“But you say,” Alexei insists. He kneels on the ice in front of the kid, who won’t meet his eyes anymore. “You call him like it’s bad word. It’s mean people like Zimmboni. Jack Zimmermann” he says.

“No, it’s—it’s not like that,” the kid mumbles. “It’s like... other people.”

“But word is mean him,” Alexei explains, and the bottom drops out of his stomach when he realizes what he’s about to do. Fuck. “Word is mean me.”

Alexei has the full attention of every small child within hearing range. The offender is bug-eyed.

Alexei nods. “Don’t say q-queer like is insult,” he says, because goddamnit, if he’s going to march under its banner, he needs to actually say it aloud. “Okay? Is not bad word. Is good word, use for good people.” He pats the kid’s shoulder and gets to his feet. “And don’t push when mad,” he adds. “Even angry, don’t fight.”

A little girl with ponytails sticking out from under her helmet announces, “But Mister Alexei, you fight all the time! I saw you on TV!”

The next five minutes are an excruciating exercise in trying to impart the virtues of pacifism to a bunch of small children who have _definitely_ seen him give other players black eyes.

None of the kids mention what he said, not for the rest of the hockey camp. But Alexei doesn’t fool himself; there were other adults nearby, and sound carries on the ice. He knows that better than most.

He calls Georgia immediately after and comes out for the second time that day. They make plans for what to do if the news gets out, and what to do if the decision stays in Alexei’s hands.

“Do you want to come out?” Georgia asks. “Even if it’s not this season, we can plan for two or three years out—”

“No.” They have Jack for that. It’s not Alexei’s sword to fall on.

“Okay,” Georgia replies easily. It’s simple as that.

But then, some time later, the Aces come to Providence for their first game against each other that season, and it’s Pride Night. The whole team tapes up with rainbows, and they wear special rainbow jerseys for warmups. It’s nothing Alexei hasn’t done plenty of times, plenty of years before. He feels secure that no eyes are on him. All eyes are on Jack, smiling and waving at his husband up in the box.

Alexei sees Kent Parson, and Kent’s eyes are on Jack. It’s a brief, flickering kind of look, stolen carefully where no one can see. When Kent looks away, his gaze drops down, to the rainbow tape on his own stick. He scrapes it with his skate. He bites his lip.

_Oh_ , Alexei thinks.

Kent looks at Jack again. He frowns, smacks his stick on the ice, and turns to join his teammates.

There are plenty of rumors—most of them ugly—about Kent and Jack and what they were to each other before the NHL. Back when it was easy to find them smiling at each other, hanging off each other, nestled together at parties and sports bars with friends.

Jack came out after less than a year in the NHL.

Kent, and tens of other guys whose preferences are open secrets, have been in the show for years and years, and plan to retire still acting straight. Many probably intend to take their secret to the grave.

Jack is an anomaly. He’s the odd man out. The rest of the league still has room for denial.

Alexei thinks about all the rookies who’ve come up to the show this year; the baby-faced teens still overwhelmed to be sharing ice time with players they’ve idolized since high school. Alexei is getting old enough to be playing with young men who _started_ playing hockey because of _him_.

He thinks about all his years on teams and in locker rooms where words were thrown around that made him feel like trash. He thinks about that boy at the summer program, wielding “queer” like a weapon that had no context or bearing on his life or the lives of others.

He thinks about other guys like Kent Parson, who saw Jack go first and want to follow, but are scared to be second.

If Alexei were still twenty, he would never consider this. But he’s well past thirty. He’s got firm ground beneath him. He knows himself. He knows what he can take. He knows what he wants to stand for.

Warmups end, and the teams clear out. Alexei finds Jack, slings an arm around him with a boisterous greeting that makes him grin, and makes a mental note to talk to Georgia after the game.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll turn 34 at the end of this year and I'll happily take every single birthday that comes after 29. Being young sucked. Getting older means varicose veins and age spots and your body making up dumb rules like "nap more" and "stop eating so much salt and processed sugar," but it also means you've got more experience under your belt so shit doesn't shake you as much anymore. You're less afraid of facing the world AND yourself.  
> And you start looking at young people and wondering what you can do to help then have an easier time than you did.
> 
> Anyway, I hope y'all are doing well and staying safe. Take care.


End file.
